James Smith

Organization/Institution
University of Arizona (U of A)
About Me (Bio)
James E. Smith is a doctoral student at the University of Arizona in the Teaching, Learning, and Sociocultural Studies: Mathematics Teaching and Teacher Education and Cognitive Science Graduate Interdisciplinary Program (GIDP) minor programs. He is also a master’s student in the Statistics GIDP. Prior to pursing his doctoral degree, he earned an MA in English as a Second Language and an MA in Elementary Teaching and was an elementary teacher in South Korea and the US. He currently works as a graduate assistant on the Developing and Validating a Scalable, Classroom-Focused Measure of Usable Knowledge for Teaching Mathematics: The Classroom Video Analysis Instrument project where he works on recruitment, contributes to item construction, automates data collection, and conducts psychometric analyses. His research focuses on interdisciplinary approaches to measures of teacher knowledge and practice. He is specifically interested in the use of Markov models as a novel, scalable method to measure and model elementary and middle school teachers’ teaching practices and usable knowledge. James is a 2019-20 CADRE Fellow.

Developing and Validating a Scalable, Classroom-Focused Measure of Usable Knowledge for Teaching Mathematics: The Classroom Video Analysis Instrument

University of Arizona (U of A)
09/01/2017

This project will develop a scalable, classroom-focused measure of usable mathematics teaching knowledge that is aligned with the state standards through a classroom video analysis measure (CVA-M) in three content areas: (a) fractions for grades 4 and 5, (b) ratio and proportions for grades 6 and 7; and (c) variables, expressions, and equations for grades 6 and 7. The project will examine the psychometric properties of the new items and scales, including the reliability of scores, and collect evidence on content, substantive, structural, and external aspects of validity to evaluate the overall construct validity of the CVA-M.